Talking to kids about transgender issues, over at VillageQ

Hey there – today I'm posting over at VillageQ, on talking to Rowan and Isaac about Transgender Awareness Week. (Spoiler alert: my conversation didn't go as planned.)

I was going to write about how we watched the Arcade Fire video “We Exist,” which features a young transgender woman, how I pulled out a recent issue of the New York Times magazine, which features three transgender men on its cover, all students at Wellesley University, an historically “women’s” college, now grappling with how to understand and acknowledge the increasing numbers of trans male and female students on its campus.

I was going to tell you about the nuanced and careful conversation we had, where they asked questions and I answered them and we all emerged slightly more enlightened after 10 or 15 minutes of pleasant chat.

But, here’s the thing: my sons are seven and 10. I don’t think they have ever in their lives had a serious, 10 or 15 minute, sit-down, nuanced, focused, and enlightened conversation about–well–anything, really.

Please click on over to read the rest!

My gay husband — New post on VillageQ

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Hey there – today on Village Q, I'm talking about why everyone needs a Gayhusband, even queer women:

Back in August, I came home one day to find my gay husband on my back deck, sweaty and intense, his arms elbows deep inside my … barbecue. What did you think I was going to say, gutter mind?
My gay husband, whose actual name is Rob, was deep-cleaning the barbecue. That’s one of his jobs, as was assembling the barbecue. He also washes dishes, makes lattes, occasionally batch-cooks vast quantities of stew or gazpacho (depending on the season), acts as our in-house tech troubleshooter, and holds the ladder while I clean out the eavestroughs. (He holds the ladder with one hand, while in the other, he manages to balance a latte and browse Grindr on his phone.)

Go thee and read the rest  posthaste. 


Being Canadian over at VillageQ

Canada rainbow flag Hey! Before you get all excited that I'm blogging twice in one week, I'm just popping up here to let you know that I'm actually ranting about O Canada — and the movement afoot to “Restore Our Anthem“ to its original gender-neutrality — over at VillageQ today. Here's a taste:

Many notable Canadian women (including writer Margaret Atwood and former Prime Minister Kim Campbell) are behind the campaign, which advocates changing the words “thy sons” to “of us.”

Seems like a simple fix, but of course it’s actually incredibly polarizing, with traditionalists and pooh-poohers of so-called political correctness on the one side and, people who think that excluding more than half a country’s population from its national anthem is an antiquated and reprehensible choice on the other.

You can imagine which side I’m on.

And then there are the people who figure that there’s so much more wrong with the anthem and with the state of our country that we should focus on bigger things. For the record, in my not-so-humble opinion, O Canada is already a terrible national anthem. …

Read the rest here.

 

Photo by Clara Johnson.